Obtaining Goal Commitment

Putting a time target on each goal is important because it reduces ambiguity, but keep in mind that deadlines should not be chosen arbitrarily. The reason is that people tend to stress whatever time span is attached to any given goal. If daily goals are assigned, the time focus will be 1 day. If quarterly goals are set, actions will be directed accordingly. The message here is twofold. First, to rephrase Parkinson’s law, effort toward a goal will be expended to fill the time available for its completion. Give people a month to complete a task that requires a week, and they’ll typically take the full month. Second, overemphasis on short-term goals can undermine long-term performance. Short-range time targets encourage people to do whatever is necessary to get immediate results, even if it’s at the expense of achieving long-term goals. 5. Prioritize goals. When someone is given more than one goal, it is important to rank the goals in order of importance. The purpose of this step is to encourage the employee to take action and expend effort on each goal in proportion to its importance. 6. Rate goals according to their difficulty and importance. Goal setting should not encourage people to choose easy goals in order to ensure success. This is an extreme illustration, but no employee should be able to say, “My goal was to do nothing and I’m pleased to say I achieved it.” Goal setting needs to take into account the difficulty of the goals selected and whether individuals are emphasizing the right goals. In this step, each goal should be rated for its difficulty and importance. When these ratings are combined with the actual level of goal achievement, you will have a more comprehensive assessment of overall goal performance. This procedure gives credit to individuals for trying difficult goals even if they don’t fully achieve them. An employee who sets easy goals and exceeds them might get a lower overall evaluation than one who sets hard goals and only partially attains them. Similarly, an employee who reaches only low-priority goals and neglects those with high priorities could be evaluated lower than one who tries for important goals and only partially achieves them. 7. Determine coordination requirements. Is the achievement of any person’s goals dependent on the cooperation and contribution of other people? If so, a potential for conflict exists. It is important in such cases to ensure that these goals are coordinated. Failure to coordinate interdependent goals can lead to territorial fights, abdication of responsibility, and overlapping of effort.

Obtaining Goal Commitment

The mere existence of goals is no assurance that employees accept and are committed to them. However, certain actions by managers can increase acceptance of and commitment to goals.12 1. Managerial support. Managers need to create a supportive climate in which goals are seen as a device for clarifying employee expectations rather than as a manipulative tool for threatening and intimidating subordinates. Managers exhibit support by helping employees select challenging goals and by reducing barriers that stand between employees and the attainment of their goals. This means, for example, making sure employees have the necessary equipment, supplies, time, and other resources to complete their tasks. Managers are supportive when subordinates view them as goal facilitators. 2. Use participation. Employee participation in goal setting is a key to getting goals accepted. To be effective, however, the participation must be authentic. That is, employees must perceive that managers are truly seeking their input. If a manager merely goes

through the motions of soliciting employee input, participation will not succeed. Employees are not stupid. If managers attempt to co-opt them—pretending to want their participation when, in fact, they already have specific goals, levels of performance, and target dates firmly in mind—the employees will be quick to label the process for what it is: assigned goals from above. 3. Know your subordinates’ capabilities. Individuals differ in terms of their skills and abilities. If these differences are taken into consideration, each person’s goals will realistically reflect that employee’s capabilities. Furthermore, matching goal difficulty and an individual’s capabilities increases the likelihood that the employee will see the goals as fair, realistic, attainable, and acceptable. If a person’s abilities aren’t adequate to meet the minimally satisfactory goals, this matching effort might signal the need for additional skill training for that employee. 4. Use rewards. There’s an old saying: What’s worth doing is worth doing for money. Offering money, promotions, recognition, time off, or similar rewards to employees contingent on goal achievement is a powerful means of increasing goal commitment. When the going gets tough on the road toward meeting a goal, people are prone to ask themselves, “What’s in it for me?” Linking rewards to the achievement of goals helps employees answer that question. 5. Clarify expectations. For people to achieve mutually acceptable goals, they need to hold commonly agreed-upon expectations.13 When the expectations of either side are not fulfilled, anger and resentment can undermine trust and good faith in the relationship. A company staffed by individuals who feel cheated because they expected more stock options will not get maximum performance from employees. The free rider that refuses to meet a group’s work expectations becomes a stumbling block to team productivity and morale.14 Expectations about the five factors summarized in Figure 9.1need to be explicitly clarified to effectively manage performance agreements between people involved in any interdependent endeavor. A clear, mutual understanding up front in these areas provides a common vision of desired results and creates standards against which people can measure their own success. Consequently, managers do not have to worry about controlling people. Instead, because of the up-front agreement, people know exactly what is expected, so your role as a manager is to be a facilitator. People will take personal responsibility and judge their own performances. In many cases, people know in their hearts how things are going much better than the records show. Personal discernment by responsible people is often far more accurate than managers’ observation or measurement.15

1. Desired results(not methods) identify what is to be done and when. 2. Guidelines specify the parameters (principles, policies, etc.) within which results are to be accomplished. 3. Resourcesidentify the human, financial, technical, or organizational support available to help accomplish the results. 4. Accountabilitysets up the standards of performance and the time of evaluation. 5. Consequencesspecify what will happen as a result of the evaluation.

FIGURE 9.1 Five Factors for Mutual Agreement in Performance Contracts. Source: Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), pp. 194–195.

CONCEPT QUIZ

After answering the following quiz, remember to go back and check your understanding of any questions you missed. Circle the right answer. True False 1. Specific goals reduce ambiguity about what an employee is expected to do. True False 2. Goals should be set just a little beyond what a person can realistically achieve to maximize motivation. True False 3. Hard goals are more likely to be perceived as challenging rather than impossible if the person has a college degree. True False 4. Participation reduces employee commitment to goals. True False 5. Feedback on goal progress is best if self-generated. True False 6. Everything an employee does on the job can and should be quantified and have a goal set for it. True False 7. In goal setting, short-term goals take priority over long-term goals. True False 8. Coming up short in trying to achieve a difficult goal should always be evaluated more positively than fully achieving an easy goal. True False 9. Managers are able to facilitate employee goal attainment. True False 10. People accept goals more readily when the goals are tied to rewards they desire.

Answers: (1) True; (2) False; (3) False; (4) False; (5) True; (6) False; (7) False; (8) False; (9) True; (10) True

BEHAVIORAL CHECKLIST

Look for these specific behaviors when evaluating your goal-setting skills and those of others. The Effective Goal Setter:

•Identifies an employee’s key job tasks. •Establishes specific and challenging goals for each key task. •Specifies deadlines for each goal. •Allows the subordinate to actively participate. •Prioritizes goals. •Rates goals for difficulty and importance. •Builds in feedback mechanisms to assess goal progress. •Commits rewards contingent on goal attainment.

ATTENTION!

Do not read the following until assigned to do so by your instructor.

MODELING EXERCISE

Setting Goals at State Bank of Vermont

Actors. Robin Gordon and Lou Millan

Objectives. To challenge the role-players and class to identify tangible, verifiable, and measurable goals through applying the behavioral skills described in this chapter.

Situation. Kelly Frum has recently been promoted to the position of operations officer at one of the largest branches of State Bank of Vermont. Her staff includes three supervisors who report directly to her, and another 35 or so operatives who answer to the supervisors. One of these supervisors is responsible for directing the 15 tellers, and the others direct customer relations and computer functions. Kelly reports to the bank manager, who, in turn, works under the State Bank of Vermont’s president. Kelly has suggested to all three supervisors that they establish goals for themselves and their employees. One supervisor, Robin Gordon, who is responsible for the tellers, has set up a meeting with her most senior teller—Lou Millan—to begin the goal-setting process.

Robin Gordon’s Role. Your job is to establish goals for Lou Millan. These goals should address issues such as prompt attention to customer needs, showing courtesy to customers, selling bank services such as Christmas Club accounts, keeping the cash drawer balanced, and taking banksponsored courses to improve skills. Examples of goals identified in the past exercises include (1) smile, greet customers with eye contact, and call them by name; (2) cross-sell the product of the month through verbal suggestions; (3) complete all regular transactions within 90 seconds; and (4) thank all customers for their business. You are a strong believer in joint decision making and want to encourage participation from Lou, who has more experience as a teller than anyone else in the bank.

Lou Millan’s Role. You are the lead teller. You are meeting with your supervisor, Robin, today to review the behavioral goals for your job description. You want to make sure you understand exactly what is expected of you, since the less-experienced employees use you as their role model. Make sure that you are clear about the specifics of all goals and expectations. Since you have more experience than anyone else in the bank, including Robin, in the teller’s job, you want to be sure to get your own ideas considered. If fact, you should probably act more as an expert adviser to Robin for setting the goals for tellers.

Observers’ Role. During the 5 minutes in which the role-players plan and organize, the class observers should review the behavioral criteria and think about how to perform the exercise if they were in Robin’s role. During the role-play, they evaluate Robin Gordon’s goal-setting skills using the following Observer’s Rating Sheet. Remember to make notes of examples of particularly good behaviors and those that need improvement.

Total Time. 25 minutes (preparation, 5 minutes; role-play, 15 minutes; debriefing, 5 minutes)

OBSERVER’S RATING SHEET

Evaluate Robin Gordon’s goal-setting skills on a 1 to 5 scale (5 being the highest). Insert examples for feedback in the spaces between behavioral criteria. Identifies key tasks _____

Sets specific and challenging goals _____

Sets deadlines _____

Provides for subordinate participation _____

Prioritizes goals _____

Rates for difficulty and importance _____

Builds in feedback _____

Commits rewards _____

GROUP EXERCISES

Break into groups of three and perform the three role-plays that follow. Remember that observers are to evaluate goal-setting skills using the behaviors on the Observer’s Rating Sheet later in the chapter.

Group Exercise 1: Goals for Probation16

Actors. Terry Donahue and Chris Espo

Situation. Terry Donahue is a probation supervisor. Chris Espo is a newly hired juvenile probation officer. Following is a description of the job of juvenile probation officer and Chris’s qualifications. Both are currently in Terry’s office to establish Chris’s goals for the coming year.

Juvenile Probation Officer

Juvenile probation officers have a caseload of up to 60 probationers. Appointments for weekly meetings with probationers are scheduled by a receptionist.

Tasks

• Meets with probationers weekly to assess their current behavior. a. Procedures stated in rules and regulations must be adhered to.

b. The officer’s supervisor can be called in to help with difficult cases. • Prepares pre-sentence reports on clients. a. Average five reports per week. b. Prepared per instructions issued by judge. c. Supervisor will review and approve.

Standards

• All probationers must be seen weekly; those showing evidence of continued criminal activity or lack of a job will be reported to supervisor. • Reports must be complete and accurate as determined by judges. • Judges must accept 75 percent of pre-sentence recommendations.

Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities Required

• Knowledge of the factors contributing to criminal behavior. • Ability to counsel probationers. • Ability to write clear and concise probation reports. • Knowledge of judge’s sentencing habits for particular types of offenders and offenses. • Knowledge of law concerning probation.

Chris Espo’s Qualifications

• B.S. in Business Administration from state university • Four years’ part-time experience running recreation programs for juvenile offenders in halfway homes • 3.5 G.P.A in all college work • Golf team captain and Amateur State Golf

Champion 2 years in a row

Terry Donahue’s Role. You are happy to have been allocated a new juvenile probation officer because your department is understaffed and has a heavy caseload. Chris Espo seems like a bright and capable addition to your staff who wants to learn the job quickly. You are concerned that his recent business degree has not provided some of the essential knowledge and skills desired for the job, but with some extra classes and training, that can be upgraded. Everyone in your agency has read about Chris’s golf championships and he is quite a hero in your small town. You want to set goals for Chris’s job that will challenge his professional development.

Chris Espo’s Role. You are happy to have the juvenile probation officer job because, next to golf, you really like working with kids. It was a tough decision to stay off of the pro golf tour, but you married your high school sweetheart 2 years ago and just had a new baby. Both of your families still live in the small town you’ve grown up in, and you feel OK about your trade-offs as long as you can use your spare time to practice and compete in amateur golf tournaments—your first love, which you do not want to compromise.

Observers’ Role. Review the Observer’s Rating Sheet and determine how you would conduct the goal-setting session yourself. After the student playing Terry Donahue has assessed his or her own performance, provide feedback on the strengths and weaknesses you observed.

Total Time. 35 minutes (breaking the job into key tasks and making a prioritized goal sheet, 10 minutes; role-play, 20 minutes; debriefing, 5 minutes)

Group Exercise 2: New Faculty Goals

Actors. Lee Davis and Jan Reeves

Situation. It’s the first week of the fall semester at your college. Lee Davis recently received a doctorate from a prestigious eastern university and has been hired as a new faculty member by the psychology department. Lee’s major area is social psychology, and his dissertation was on how norms impact decision making in groups. Lee’s department head, Jan Reeves, has invited Lee to sit down and discuss Lee’s future plans. The following advertisement appeared in psychology journals for the position that Lee accepted. It provides the faculty responsibilities for which specific goals need to be set.

Position Available

Entry-level assistant professor of psychology. Completed Ph.D. required. Teach in areas of introductory psychology, social psychology, and industrial psychology. Teaching load: three courses per term. Strong research and publication interests. University service and active involvement in professional associations expected. Contact Dr. Jan Reeves.

Jan Reeve’s Role. As department head, you strongly believe that every faculty member should have goals for all areas of responsibility. This is especially true of junior staff, who are often so concerned about new class preparations that they forget about their service and publication responsibilities. You believe new faculty must be particularly concerned with excellence in the classroom and publishing research articles that will reinforce the prestigious reputation of the department and university.

Lee Davis’s Role. You are looking forward to a productive academic career as a teacher and scholar. Like most new faculty members, you are concerned about preparing well for your

new courses and getting started publishing some research. You have a good start with your dissertation data for writing some journal articles, but you know you must start some new experiments to generate new data. This is a prestigious “publish or perish” university with a reputation for teaching excellence. You hope you can avoid serving on make-work committees until you get your teaching and research established. You only have 6 years before an up-or-out decision will be made.

Total Time. 25 minutes (preparation, 5 minutes; role-play, 15 minutes; debriefing, 5 minutes)

Group Exercise 3: Coaching Goals

Actors. R. J. Simpson (athletic director at State College) and Pat Bell (new women’s basketball coach at State College)

Situation. R. J. Simpson made a recent offer to Pat Bell to join State College as the college’s new women’s basketball coach at a salary of $85,000 per year. Pat has accepted. Pat will replace the previous coach, who held the job for 3 years and had a combined record of 20 wins and 42 losses. Pat previously was head women’s basketball coach at a junior college (JC) where she won 92 percent of her games and two national JC championships. State College has 12,000 students and is a member of the 10-school Northwest Athletic Conference. During the past 3 years, State College has finished no higher than sixth in the conference and has not been in any postseason tournaments. The team averages 1,500 fans for its home games in the college’s arena, which has a capacity of 9,000. The women’s basketball program, which last year had a budget of $250,000, was responsible for a loss of $60,000 to the college’s overall athletic program. This meeting is to set goals for the women’s basketball program’s coming season. These goals will be used to judge Pat’s performance and as a basis for allocating performance-based bonuses, provided by alumni and athletic boosters, of up to $20,000 annually.

R. J. Simpson’s Role. You are delighted to have hired Pat Bell, who has such an excellent record from a competitive JC league. State College is at a crucial juncture with its women’s basketball program this year, after losing $60,000 last year. If you can’t get at least a breakeven this year, the Board of Governors is insisting that the program be dropped, which means you will face women’s rights protests, possible discrimination lawsuits, and problems in meeting NCAA requirements that universities spend equally (excluding football) on men’s and women’s intercollegiate sports programs. You want to make sure that Pat has extremely clear-cut goals, is motivated to achieve them, and that the two of you have mutual expectations about what is involved.

Pat Bell’s Role. You feel that you are at the right place at the right time. You were fortunate over the last 2 years at JC to have some extraordinary talent playing for you. Nevertheless, you have to pat yourself on the back because you were able to capitalize on your team’s skills by implementing some creative strategies during the national championship playoffs. You have enjoyed the complete independence and freedom to do as you choose as a coach. If you can get the right recruits and do things your way, you feel that you can turn State’s record around, improve the school’s prestige, and boost your career. You feel confident in your experience and abilities to make good things happen for your team and the university. All you need is the goahead to do it.

Total Time. 30 minutes (determine key tasks and prioritize goals, 5 minutes; role-play, 20 minutes; debriefing, 5 minutes)

OBSERVER’S RATING SHEET

For the exercise in which you are an observer, evaluate key goal-setting behaviors on a 1 to 5 scale (5 being the highest). Insert comments for feedback in the spaces between behavioral criteria.

Rating Behavior

______ Identifies key tasks

______ Prioritizes goals

______ Sets specific and challenging goals

______ Rates for difficulty and importance

______ Sets deadlines

______ Builds in feedback

______ Provides for subordinate participation

______ Commits rewards

Summary Checklist

Review your performance and look over others’ ratings of your skill. Now assess yourself on each of the key learning behaviors. Put a check (✓) next to those behaviors in which you need improvement. I identify key tasks in employees’ jobs. _________ I establish specific and challenging goals for each key task. _________ I specify deadlines for each goal. _________ I allow subordinates to participate actively. _________ I prioritize goals. _________ I rate goals for difficulty and importance. _________ I build in feedback mechanisms to assess goal progress. _________ I commit rewards contingent on goal attainment. _________

APPLICATION QUESTIONS

1. Does goal setting emphasize short-term results at the expense of long-term effectiveness? 2. How does goal setting deal with employees who have multiple goals, some of which are conflicting? 3. What barriers in an organization can you identify that might limit the effectiveness of a goal-setting program? How can these barriers be overcome? 4. Explain what an instructor can do to use goal setting with students in a classroom.

REINFORCEMENT EXERCISES

The following suggestions are activities you can do to practice and reinforce the goal-setting techniques you learned in this chapter. 1. Where do you want to be in 5 years? Write out three specific goals you want to achieve in 5 years. Make sure they are specific, challenging, and verifiable. Share your goals with a classmate and get feedback. 2. Set specific and challenging goals for yourself in this class. Do the same for your other classes. 3. Set 10 personal and academic goals that you want to achieve by the end of this year. Prioritize and rate them for difficulty.

ACTION PLAN

1. Which behavior do I want to improve the most?

2. Why? What will be my payoff?

3. What potential obstacles stand in my way?

4. What specific things will I do to improve? (For examples, see the Reinforcement Exercises.)

5. When will I do them?

6. How and when will I measure my success?

Endnotes

1.Gary P. Latham and Edwin A. Locke, “Goal

Setting—A Motivational Technique That Works,”

Organizational Dynamics (Autumn 1979), pp. 68–80. 2.Edwin A. Locke, Karyll N. Shaw, Lise M. Saari, and Gary P. Latham, “Goal Setting and Task

Performance: 1969–1980,” Psychological Bulletin (July 1981), pp. 125–152. 3.Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, Goal-

Setting: A Motivational Technique That Works! (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984). 4.Gary P. Latham and Gary A. Yukl, “A Review of

Research on the Application of Goal Setting in

Organizations,” Academy of Management Journal (December 1975), pp. 824–845. 5.Gary P. Latham and Edwin A. Locke, “Goal Setting—

A Motivational Technique That Works,”

Organizational Dynamics (Autumn 1979), pp. 68–80. 6.Gary P. Latham and Lise M. Saari, “The Effects of

Holding Goal Difficulty Constant on Assigned and

Participatively Set Goals,” Academy of Management Journal (March 1979), pp. 163–168. 7.Gary P. Latham and Gary A. Yukl, “A Review of

Research on the Application of Goal Setting in

Organizations,” Academy of Management Journal (December 1975), pp. 824–845. 8.Gary P. Latham, Terence R. Mitchell, and Dennis

L. Dossett, “Importance of Participative Goal

Setting and Anticipated Rewards on Goal Difficulty and Job Performance,” Journal of Applied

Psychology (April 1978), pp. 163–171. 9.Edwin A. Locke and David M. Schweiger, “Participation in Decision Making: One More Look,” in

B. M. Staw (ed.), Research in Organizational

Behavior,Vol. 1(Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1979), pp. 265–339. 10.John M. Ivancevich and J. T. McMahon, “The

Effects of Goal Setting, External Feedback, and

Self-Generated Feedback on Outcome Variables:

A Field Experiment,” Academy of Management

Journal (June 1982), pp. 359–372. 11.Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, Goal-

Setting: A Motivational Technique That Works! (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984). 12.Gary P. Latham and Edwin A. Locke, “Goal

Setting—A Motivational Technique That Works,”

Organizational Dynamics (Autumn 1979), pp. 68–80. 13.D. M. Rousseau, Psychological Contracts in

Organizations: Understanding Written and Unwritten Agreements (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1995). 14.Joyce S. Osland, David A. Kolb, and Irwin M.

Rubin, Organizational Behavior: An Experiential

Approach, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Prentice Hall, 2001), pp. 11–26. 15.Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective

People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), pp. 194–195. 16.Adapted from Donald E. Klingner, “When the

Traditional Job Description Is Not Enough.”

Reprinted with the permission of Personnel Journal,

Inc., Costa Mesa, CA, all rights reserved, 1979.